New Releases for the Week of June 28, 2019

ANNABELLE COMES HOME

(New Line) Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, McKenna Grace, Madison Iseman, Katie Sarife, Steve Coulter, Michael Cimino. Directed by Gary Dauberman

Ed and Lorraine Warren, professional demonologists, have collected some dangerous artifacts over the years but none so perilous as the doll Annabelle. When a friend of their ten-year-old daughter releases the doll from her prison, she begins to reawaken the demonic spirits slumbering in those artifacts, leading to a night of incalculable horror.

See the trailer, clips and a video featurette here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for horror violence and terror)

Article 15

(Zee) Ayushmann Khurrana, Isha Talwar, Kumud Mishra, Manoj Pahwa. An Indian police officer, raised mostly in Europe, struggles to reconcile the traditional caste system with his own values of right and wrong. This is based on actual events.

See the trailer and clips here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: AMC West Oaks
Rating: NR

Echo in the Canyon

(Greenwich) Jakob Dylan, David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, Brian Wilson. From 1967 to 1969, rock music and pop culture would undergo a startling metamorphosis and the epicenter for it was a small community of musicians headquartered in Laurel Canyon in North Hollywood. This Florida Film Festival favorite celebrates the music and the musicians of the era with vintage clips and a tribute concert featuring modern artists influenced by the era. This was previously reviewed in Cinema365; you can read the review by clicking on the link below under “Scheduled For Review.”

See the trailer and video featurettes here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Musical Documentary
Now Playing: Enzian Theater
Rating: PG-13 (for drug references and suggestive content)

The Last Black Man in San Francisco

(A24) Jimmie Falls, Jonathan Majors, Tichina Arnold, Danny Glover. A young man dreams of reclaiming the beautiful Victorian home his grandfather built in the heart of San Francisco, but the City isn’t what he remembered it to be.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for language, brief nudity and drug use)

The Other Side of Heaven 2: Fire of Faith

(Good Deed) Christopher Gorham, Natalie Medlock, Russell Dixon, Joe Folau. A Mormon missionary returns to Tonga – this time with his family – only to face a crisis of faith when his son is born with a serious illness.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Faith-Based Drama
Now Playing: Regal Pointe Orlando, Regal Winter Park Village, Rialto Spanish Springs Square
Rating: PG-13 (for some thematic material including violence)

Yesterday

(Universal) Himesh Patel, Lily James, Ed Sheeran, Kate McKinnon. A musician ready to give up on a career in music wakes up one morning after a bus accident during a mysterious global blackout to discover that nobody can remember the Beatles or their music. This leads him to an ethical dilemma as he takes the sure path to stardom.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, video featurettes and B-roll video here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Musical Fantasy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for suggestive content and language)

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:
Being Frank
Brochevarevavura
The Command (Kursk)
Framing John DeLorean
Holy Lands
Kalki
Ophelia
Rainbow’s Sunset

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI/FT. LAUDERDALE:

Brochevarevavura
The Fall of the American Empire
Kalki

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA/ST. PETERSBURG:

The Fall of the American Empire
Killers Anonymous
The Last Whistle

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE/ST. AUGUSTINE:

Brochevarevavura
Kalki

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Annabelle Comes Home
Echo in the Canyon
Yesterday

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Songwriter

Songs are weird things says Ed Sheeran.

(2018) Music Documentary (Apple Music/Abramorama) Ed Sheeran, Benny Blanco, Julia Michaels, Johnny McDaid, Matthew Sheeran, Fuse Odg, Foy Vance, Ryan Tedder, Murray Cummings, Amy Wadge. Directed by Murray Cummings

 

Some movies are meant to appeal to niche audiences. This particular documentary is going to appeal to Ed Sheeran fans, for example; it isn’t likely to win any new ones and how you receive the film is going to entirely depend on how you receive his music.

Me, I blow hot and cold on Ed Sheeran. He has written some beautiful, amazing songs. He has also written some cliché pop songs that sound like they came off an assembly line. It’s okay – nobody is ever going to write songs in which every single one appeal to you. That just isn’t possible. However, I suppose that dichotomy of admiration has colored my perception enough to make this a mixed review.

The movie takes place during Sheeran’s 2016 hiatus. He had just finished touring off his second album Multiply and was preparing to record his third album Divide. Cummings shoots this entirely on hand-held cameras giving a fly-on-the-wall immediacy but strangely it lacks intimacy. It feels like everyone there is playing to the camera and nobody is being themselves. We rarely get any conversations with any depth to them during the course of the film, which is not a good thing.

That would be all right if there was something interesting going on onscreen but I’m afraid there really isn’t. The songwriting process seems to be Sheeran and various collaborators noodling about on guitars, keyboards or to a computer-generated beat and coming up with snippets of lyrics and couplets of songs. There does seem to be a process of building each song like a child with a LEGO set but oddly Sheeran never comments on the process and even more stupefying is that Cummings never asks him.

This isn’t a Dylanesque songwriter sitting down at a piano or with a guitar and letting inspiration come; Sheeran has collaborators (as many as nine) on each song which I suppose can generate some synchronicity but to be honest, a lot of the songs lack a human kind of spark. Personally I would love to see Sheeran lock himself in a room and let his heart do the writing but given that he proclaims near the end of the film “Anyone who doesn’t want to be bigger than Adele is in the wrong business,” which leads me to retort that anyone who doesn’t want to write songs that illuminate, or touch the heart of the listener is in the wrong business as well.

Keep in mind that Sheeran is a young man who achieved extraordinary success at a young age and perhaps his priorities are skewed because of it. He seems an affable young man with an easy grin and there are at least two songs on the album that I thought were incredible but most of the others were to put it bluntly sounded alike. The problem with modern music is that too many artists rely on formulas to create hits rather than revealing something of themselves. Formulas are easy; insights are hard and the latter are almost non-existent here.

Still, some of the musical sequences are lovely (particularly a heartwarming moment when he records at Abbey Road) and some are just goofy, most of that supplied by producer/songwriter/partner-in-crime Benny Blanco whose fear of flying causes him to take a transatlantic cruise ship. Sheeran tags along and the men turn one of the larger suites into a recording studio for the voyage which sounds better on paper than it does on film. This is not a great documentary but it’s an adequate one. Maybe that’s the best we could have expected.

REASONS TO GO: Sheeran fans are going to adore this.
REASONS TO STAY: I didn’t really find any insight into the songwriting process.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a fair amount of profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Cummings is Sheeran’s cousin; the two have been close friends since childhood.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/17/18: Rotten Tomatoes: 60% positive reviews. Metacritic: 40/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Nick Cave: One More Time With Feeling
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Minding the Gap